Digital convergence. The buzzphrase has been around for a long time. Steve Jobs is at the cusp of making it real in the entertainment industry, and is starting to make moves that bring his intentions into clearer focus. With the recent revelations about the new iPod interface, the idea of digital convergence suddenly struck me like a bolt of Pixar lightening. Having a clickwheel appear on the touch-sensitive LCD screen of an iPod with a full face display is a great idea. Bigger screen. No need for mechanical input. Brilliant. What next? Here's what's next:
Apple is rumored to be working on an ultra-broadband media delivery system that will use the .Mac iDisk to store and deliver entertainment products to your iPod and Mac as fast as you can bring them in. With Apple's convergence interface Front Row in just its first iteration, we can expect only bigger and better things from Apple in this area. Controlling your discreet video, audio and photo collections through a single interface is great. Remote control of that from the couch is even better with the included traditional remote control. Bid deal, right? Windows Media Centre does this already. Here's where it gets interesting. The next move is to make the iPod the remote control, followed by integrating the different media types into single entertainment offerings. Here's how you do it.
First, the iPod needs to communicate to the Mac via BlueTooth and, ultimately, WiFi. This makes the iPod a nascent remote controller. This is already possible with some cell-phones with Sailing Software's products. With your entertainment collection being constantly synched between the iPod and the iMac, the image on the big screen can be the same as the image on the small screen on the iPod. Whatever you are doing on the small screen should translate to what you are doing on the big screen. The virtual click-wheel on the iPod becomes the virtual click-wheel for Front Row. Fast-forwarding through the movie becomes the same gesture on the big screen as it does on the iPod, with the wheel either being displayed or not, depending on your preference. Clearly, it is ideal to be able to operate the virtual click-wheel without it being represented on the screen. The representation of it should simply be a training mechanism. People will learn to operate it without seeing it. This will keep the screen clear.
Second, the iPod touch screen should become your portal into a converged media experience. Entertainment is being consumed in different ways now. We are building our own converged media narratives now, based on mood and whim. DVD content, for example, is being consumed in chunks as people surf through the DVD and watch different parts via the chapters interface. The special features are becoming as popular as the main feature. Games are being included. On the Doom DVD, for example, when I inserted it into my XBox to view it (I use an XBox as a DVD player on one of my entertainment centers) the Doom game loaded first, not the movie. A bug, but a prophetic one. The iPod needs to do this as well, and it needs the Web and Games to really complete the set. Apple's potential acquisition of Palm makes sense if you think about the need to converge web content into this universe. Palm devices do this well via tiny 802.11 cards, and increasingly well via newer wide area protocols like GPRS EDGE, 3G and 1X. Also, the iPod should eventually operate like a PSP, with game content developed specifically for it. This, when added to photo, video, audio and Web content makes the iPod a complete device. No cell phone is needed because as IP services get better we switch to VOIP and video messaging instead of cell.
The most important aspect of this is that the iPod mirror what you are doing on the larger screen as well. Front Row should eventually operate exactly like your iPod, except much, much bigger and louder. Depending on where you are, the iPod is either your main device, or your remote. If it is your remote, all the functionality is taken over by the Mac and your entertainment/communications experience takes place through your home system with a representation of it on your iPod for remote purposes. This puts the iPod in your hands at all entertainment moments. Talk about brand awareness.
Finally, the entertainment product itself converges. Movies become clickable throughout with the ability to use the iPod interface to select a character or object to get background or supplementary content directly from within the movie itself. Subsequent viewings become treasure hunts. Narrative structure becomes split and parallel, like the additional parallel Matrix narrative shot for the Matrix game. Choose which narrative you want to follow. View a photo gallery of a character or object (plane, car, handbag, etc.). Talk about product placement. Freeze a movie and listen to a soundtrack element in isolation. Learn more about that artist. Buy that artist's music thorugh iTunes. Freeze a movie and enter a game at the same point to participate in the action. Hit the web and enter a discussion about the very scene you are watching, or move from the web into a scene in movie being discussed. The possibilities are literally endless.
We're talking total digital convergence with the iPod as the ubiquitous object controlling the whole experience. The passport to entertainment in the 21st century. The keystone of fun.
That's what Steve Jobs should be doing next. He is our passeur into the next mediaverse. Betcha this is what he is doing.
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